While travelling, we’re all looking for some much-needed beauty. Especially now that we’re drowning in bad news from all over the world, we’re in desperate need for some aesthetically pleasing distraction to counterbalance everything that’s wrong. And although there’s something beautiful to be found everywhere, even in the darkest of places, some objects and places simply score better than others. So where to begin in your quest for beauty? Where to go to, by train, plane or by car? Well, we’ve got the answer to all your questions.
Actually, to be honest, we can’t take the credit for this one. It’s actually Homedit, a design website, which got to the bottom of it. We’re simply here to share their remarkable technique and outcome with you. The team behind the website wanted to make a list with the most beautiful places in Europe yet one question had to be answered first. How do you rate a landmark’s beauty in a more or less objective way? You can’t just take the writer’s opinion or do a little survey, according to Homedit. So they decided to come up with a different way of rating those landmarks and you might have heard of it before, especially if you’re a fan of ‘The Da Vinci Code’.
“The “golden ratio” is a unique mathematical relationship. Two numbers are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the numbers (a b) divided by the larger number (a) is equal to the ratio of the larger number divided by the smaller number (a/b). The golden ratio is about 1.618, and represented by the Greek letter phi”, as National Geographic likes to put it.
Sectio Aurea
Yes, indeed, we’re talking about something called the Golden Ratio or Sectio Aurea in Latin. It’s represented by the number 1,618 and has everything to do with the so-called ‘perfect’ proportions of an object. Throughout history, the principle has influenced artists all over the world, even men like Le Corbusier and Salvador Dali were obsessed with it. And now Homedit has used that Golden Ratio to make a ranking with Europe’s most beautiful landmarks, by dividing that landmark’s width by its height and then comparing that number to 1,618. And the ranking they came up with, certainly makes you want to pack your bags.
1. Kyiv Pechersk Lavra – Kyiv, Ukraine
2. Basilica of the Sagrada Família – Barcelona, Spain
3. Prague Castle – Prague, Czech Republic
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